Things to Watch at This Week’s Fed Meeting

Don’t expect any clear signals out of this meeting about the timing of the Federal Reserve’s first interest rate increase. The central bank has made clear it won’t start moving rates at its two-day policy meeting this week. Chairwoman Janet Yellen is not holding a press conference afterward and central bank officials are not releasing new economic projections. So investors’ only new clues from the meeting about the Fed’s thinking will lie in its statement, to be released Wednesday at 2 p.m. EDT.

The Fed will probably repeat that it won’t start lifting borrowing costs until it sees more improvement in the labor market and is reasonably confident inflation will move toward its 2% target. Beyond that, any changes could be very subtle.